Benefit agents such as perfumes are expensive and may be less effective when employed at high levels in compositions such as personal care compositions, cleaning compositions and fabric care compositions. As a result, there is a desire to maximize the effectiveness of benefit agents. One manner of achieving that objective is to improve the delivery efficiency of the benefit agents. Unfortunately, it is difficult to improve the delivery efficiencies of benefit agents as they may be lost due to their physical or chemical characteristics, they may be incompatible with other compositional components or the situs that is treated, or they may be lost during post application processes such as rinsing or drying.
One method of improving the delivery efficiency of benefit agents is to encapsulate them so that the benefit agent is released via pressure that fractures the shell of the encapsulate. However, current encapsulated benefit agents can leak over time and current encapsulated benefit agents, in general, may not fracture and release the benefit agent when desired—particularly in consumer product applications where limited mechanical forces are available, inter alia drapery or upholstery refreshing, shampoos, conditioners and hair sprays or styling gels, and hard surface treatment applications, floor cleaners, dust removing products to name a few. In short, Applicants recognized that current encapsulates do not function as desired as such encapsulates only respond to ineffective and/or undesired external stimuli such as pressure. Applicants further recognized that the correct external stimuli for certain applications, are temperature, infrared radiation, visible light, and/or ultraviolet radiation. While not being bound by theory, Applicants believe that encapsulates having a shell that comprises one or more moieties that are sensitive to infrared radiation, visible light, and/or ultraviolet radiation, for example, azo-benzene moieties have a state of order and conformation that permits the encapsulate to respond to triggers such as the aforementioned species of electromagnetic radiation. Such response typically results in the release of all or a portion of the encapsulate's core material. Such encapsulate's response to the aforementioned species of electromagnetic radiation can be tailored by the judicious selection of the type and amount of the one or more shell moieties that are sensitive to infrared radiation, visible light, and/or ultraviolet radiation and the type and amount of the remaining moieties that make up the encapsulate's shell. In short, the encapsulates that are disclosed herein can be tailored such that, over the desired time frame, they have the desired leakage profile and release profile. In view of the current art encapsulates, such release characteristics are unexpected as the skilled artisan would expect that encapsulates that are triggered by the aforementioned species of electromagnetic radiation would, once exposed to a trigger, release all of their benefit agent.